Not too long ago, this time of year was known as golf's silly season. Now it is more like golf's ugly season.

In just the last two weeks, golf fans have been blitzed with headlines about the feud between Tiger Woods and Golf Channel announcer Brandel Chamblee, stemming from Chamblee's assessment that Woods is "cavalier with the rules." They have heard new allegations from Vijay Singh's lawyer that the PGA Tour plays favorites in drug testing. They've pondered Rory McIlroy's claims, in a new lawsuit, that he was taken advantage of by his recently fired management team. They have tried to decipher the European Tour's new regulations that have several top players, including Ernie Els and Charl Schwartzel, angrily sitting out the Tour's finale in Dubai next week, despite $12 million being up for grabs. And they've monitored the charges against six-time European Tour-winner Simon Dyson, whom video showed tamping down a spike mark in his line after marking the ball.

All this as the world's top players barnstorm the globe picking up humongous checks, from both prize purses and appearance fees, in unlikely places like Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates.

In silly seasons past, popular players also cashed in on their renown, but in ways that by today's standards seem laid-back and even quaint. Fred Couples was the king of the Skins Game. He and other crowd favorites like Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino re-created friendly weekend skins matches for purses on the order of $500,000 (they never reached more than $1 million) and we all watched on television because they were miked. Last week Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy played a similar kind of exhibition match, except that it was in China and unavailable for viewing in the U.S., even via online streaming, due to PGA Tour rights restrictions. Appearance fees weren't released, but Woods reportedly received about $2 million for his efforts, and McIlroy $1.5 million, no matter who won. (McIlroy did, by one stroke.)

On Tuesday, Woods drove a ball across the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul—from Europe to Asia, that was the gimmick—as part of his reported $2.8 million fee for playing in the Turkish Airlines Open. That's silly, too, but not as much fun as watching Trevino wisecrack while stealing a skin from Couples.

Several silly season staples remain, including this weekend's Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge and next month's PNC Father-Son Challenge and Franklin Templeton Shootout. But these days these made-for-TV filler events are increasingly overshadowed by the never-ending roster of global mega-events. In Shanghai last week, 40 of the world's top 50-ranked players competed at the $8.5 million HSBC Champions.

The biggest change to silly seasons is that they are no longer about pro golfers kicking back at the end of the year and grabbing a little extra spending money. For one thing, the year no longer ever ends; The PGA Tour's new 2013-2014 wraparound schedule began in October, the week after the Presidents Cup, instead of January as in the past.

The second reason is the professional game's success in becoming a big-deal global sports juggernaut. You can't begrudge the players or golf's institutions for chasing after all this new money. They would be fools not to. But we, as fans, can note with regret how all the added pressure has opened fissures in the game's tradition of gentility.

There was nothing the least bit genteel, for instance, about Woods's fierce reaction to Chamblee's provocative comment on golf.com that called into question Woods's integrity after several rules violations in 2013. Woods's agent, Mark Steinberg, talked about legal action and Woods added that the onus was on Golf Channel and "what they are prepared to do"—implying he thought Chamblee should be fired. Chamblee apologized for creating such a fuss, although not for his commentary, and both parties have now said they are ready to move on.

Neither is there anything genteel about Singh's lawsuit against the PGA Tour, claiming that he suffered "public humiliation and ridicule" during the Tour's investigation earlier this year into his use of deer-antler spray. The Tour ultimately dropped its case.

The heightened tension has even penetrated amateur golf. The U.S. Golf Association's decision last spring to ban the anchored putting stroke starting in 2016, was more polarizing than it needed to be. Many recreational golfers who use long putters understandably disagreed with the decision, and their ire was stirred up by supporting objections also from the PGA Tour, which sought to protect the interests of its anchor-putting stars like Adam Scott and Keegan Bradley. The PGA of America, which also opposed the ban, had several other minor conflicts this year with the USGA, some relating to the timing of announcements of lucrative television and tournament deals. These created at least the appearance of strain between the two organizations.

On another front, the PGA of America is fighting to keep its PGA Championship from losing prestige in the new megaglobal environment. On Wednesday it announced a boost in its prize money next year to $10 million, $2 million more (for now) than the other three majors. In 2016, with golf's inclusion in the summer Olympics in Brazil, the PGA Championship may have to vacate its traditional August spot in the golf calendar. The PGA has said it is considering staging its championship, occasionally, outside the U.S., perhaps as early as 2020, to position it as "the international major."

All this expansion is generally a good thing for professional golf. The LPGA has added eight new events to its schedule since 2011 and now plays more than a third of its 28 events outside North America. And the PGA Tour, with the announcement Sunday of the creation of the PGA Tour China, now has three international feeder tours, including one in Latin America and one in Canada.

But to some degree the PGA Tour's success has come at the expense of the European Tour and other global tours. The PGA Tour with its new global schedule—last month's CIMB Classic in Malaysia and last week's HSBC Champions were official PGA Tour events—is clearly putting the squeeze on the European Tour, most of whose top players now play more events on the PGA Tour than on the European Tour.

Golf is likely to become a bigger and even tastier pie. One can only hope the infighting over how to serve it up doesn't get too ugly.

—Email John Paul at golfjournal @wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications Tiger Woods, as part of a promotion, hit a golf ball on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul from Asia to Europe. A photo caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly said Europe to Asia.

Personally i cannot understand why anyone would want to watch a golf match. I played the game, and quite often for many years and always given the choice of playing 18 or watching the pros take an interminable amount of time between shots, I chose to play 18.

It's gone from a small money cop a feel to a big money global grope. Sounds like progress to me. Exposure of the world's best players in emerging golf markets isn't a bad thing for anyone who makes a living off the game.

It's good if only for the fact we're less likely to hear from those guys that want to make the hole larger or 'relax' the rules in the name of 'growing' the game...

I would hate to think how many violations would be "caught by the camera" if every player had every twitch of a muscle filmed in a round as does Tiger. Chamblee is a small fry and is trying to flex what little muscle he has.

Tamping down a spike mark is one of the dumbest penalties in golf along with grounding your club in a sand trap AFTER you have hit it into another sand trap (I personally saw Stewart Cinc get DQed because of that rule). At least it's no longer a penalty if the wind blows your ball on the green.

At the end of the day, the players have to set themselves up financially for the rest of their lives. We working stooges have 40 years to do this. The players have to ride their hot streaks for many, many fewer years. They are just doing their job and getting their paycheck.

Maybe, but Tiger is a cheat, a liar, does not keep his vows, and totally lacks normal mortality. He is nothing but a rich loser. That people fawn all over his every breath is ridiculous. He is a talented golfer but a useless human being.

It's true many of them have a much shorter work span than we do but you forgot to say they are playing for a chance to win over a $million dollars in one week; wouldn't need to many of those or the monies from ending up in the top 125 to be set for life. I enjoyed professional golf much more during the Palmer, Nicklaus, Player era.

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